WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.
byVanderleunonDecember 5, 2019
Well, to be fair, we did tell them to put down their phones and go outside to play. A cinematic snowball fight shot on iPhone 11 Pro by David Leitch, who has directed: John Wick, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw.
History is divided into two era. Before iPhone, and after iPhone.
Think that’s an overstatement? Look at movies before the iPhone, and think of how many dire situations could’ve been solved or escaped from if the character had just whipped out the smart phone.
Before the iPhone, I never took photos. I did not know which end of the camera the round came out of. Now, I do take some snaps. It feels a bit like ascending from the primordial ooze.
But, I shan’t be making any epic movies like this one posted. I’ll leave that for the real movie makers.
Much as I don’t support anything “i……” this was good!
ghostsniperDecember 6, 2019, 4:44 AM
What you’re looking at there is not necessarily the results of better equipment but rather the difference between a novice and an expert filmist. Yeah, I just invented that word. We’ve all see what novice picture/video takers can do and the quality of the tool has little to do with it. I’ll posit that an educated and experienced filmist can make even a rudimentary tool perform nicely. Clearly, the example above was done by people with vast experience.
Gordon ScottDecember 6, 2019, 8:50 PM
Yeah, Ghost, but remember that Chinese gal who does the rural cooking videos? She would shoot and *edit* hers on an iPhone 6. Now she has better equipment and help, but she did amazing stuff with basic equipment and no training.
But yeah, that was made by successful movie director. Those guys can see the finished product in their head before one frame is exposed. It’s the same with music producers. They hear a few chords knocked out on a guitar and they can hear an arranged, finished piece. I have no idea how they do it.
There have been times in the last few years when I regretted I did not have a camera or a video camera handy. Then I remembered, sometimes anyway, that I actually do have one in my back pocket, and it takes amazingly good photos and videos.
ghostsniperDecember 7, 2019, 4:33 AM
Gordon, that happens to me too all the time, forgetting I have a camera in my pocket. My point above was two fold, that much of the cell camera picture and video taking that is done now a days is on the fly by people that can’t be bothered with the arduous task of thinking for 3 seconds before snapping the pik. I’m not immune to this malady. We’ve all done it. I’m not saying that every pik or vid should be planned out to the nth degree but having an idea about what the end result should be would do wonders.
Regarding the above video. What you are looking at is planning, filming, editing, and I’ll suggest the editing is the most important part as that is the part that everyone sees. No one sees the mistakes that have been cut out. I’d bet money the unedited version is less enjoyable than the edited version. Back in the Windows 98 era I had a pretty good video camera and purchased some regarded video editing software but alas I quickly found I wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing.
Gordon ScottDecember 7, 2019, 11:21 AM
I remember (cough, cough) when a guy had to balance a video camera on his shoulder and wear a 30 pound belt of batteries….
It’s kinda funny who does turn out to have an interest in that sort of editing. Like you, I once had the software, and never ever used it. But I have seen a gal who seemingly had no interest at all take a knock-off version of Photoshop and turn out some stunning stuff.
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
They will declare: Every journey has been taken.
You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.
They will insist: Everything has been spoken.
You shall reply: I have not had my say.
They will tell you: Everything has been done.
You shall reply: My way is not complete.
You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.
Fear not. You are the gate – you, the gatekeeper.
And you shall go through and on . . .
—Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, THIRD WISH
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
from The Painter by Neil Young
The painter stood Before her work She looked around every where She saw the pictures and she painted them She picked the colors from the air Green to green Red to red Yellow to yellow In the light Black to black When the evening comes Blue to blue In the night
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
Contemplation of the Sword
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
from Preludes
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
from Canto CXV BY EZRA POUND
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Ferreya
ARTIST: GIBSON
Edwin Deakin, American
Hillegas
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
History is divided into two era. Before iPhone, and after iPhone.
Think that’s an overstatement? Look at movies before the iPhone, and think of how many dire situations could’ve been solved or escaped from if the character had just whipped out the smart phone.
Before the iPhone, I never took photos. I did not know which end of the camera the round came out of. Now, I do take some snaps. It feels a bit like ascending from the primordial ooze.
But, I shan’t be making any epic movies like this one posted. I’ll leave that for the real movie makers.
In the continuing effort to kill joy & happiness everywhere…. the city of Wausau, Wisconsin has outlawed throwing snowballs.
https://wausaupilotandreview.com/2019/12/05/yes-throwing-snowballs-is-illegal-in-wausau-but-its-not-a-new-rule/
Looks like a junior version of Gladiator
Awww,how unexpected. The girlzz win. Again.
Much as I don’t support anything “i……” this was good!
What you’re looking at there is not necessarily the results of better equipment but rather the difference between a novice and an expert filmist. Yeah, I just invented that word. We’ve all see what novice picture/video takers can do and the quality of the tool has little to do with it. I’ll posit that an educated and experienced filmist can make even a rudimentary tool perform nicely. Clearly, the example above was done by people with vast experience.
Yeah, Ghost, but remember that Chinese gal who does the rural cooking videos? She would shoot and *edit* hers on an iPhone 6. Now she has better equipment and help, but she did amazing stuff with basic equipment and no training.
But yeah, that was made by successful movie director. Those guys can see the finished product in their head before one frame is exposed. It’s the same with music producers. They hear a few chords knocked out on a guitar and they can hear an arranged, finished piece. I have no idea how they do it.
There have been times in the last few years when I regretted I did not have a camera or a video camera handy. Then I remembered, sometimes anyway, that I actually do have one in my back pocket, and it takes amazingly good photos and videos.
Gordon, that happens to me too all the time, forgetting I have a camera in my pocket. My point above was two fold, that much of the cell camera picture and video taking that is done now a days is on the fly by people that can’t be bothered with the arduous task of thinking for 3 seconds before snapping the pik. I’m not immune to this malady. We’ve all done it. I’m not saying that every pik or vid should be planned out to the nth degree but having an idea about what the end result should be would do wonders.
Regarding the above video. What you are looking at is planning, filming, editing, and I’ll suggest the editing is the most important part as that is the part that everyone sees. No one sees the mistakes that have been cut out. I’d bet money the unedited version is less enjoyable than the edited version. Back in the Windows 98 era I had a pretty good video camera and purchased some regarded video editing software but alas I quickly found I wasn’t very interested in that sort of thing.
I remember (cough, cough) when a guy had to balance a video camera on his shoulder and wear a 30 pound belt of batteries….
It’s kinda funny who does turn out to have an interest in that sort of editing. Like you, I once had the software, and never ever used it. But I have seen a gal who seemingly had no interest at all take a knock-off version of Photoshop and turn out some stunning stuff.